


foxtail

by gooseberry



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Desert, Domesticity, Dwarves, Dwarvish Culture, F/F, Lesbian Dwarves, Scenery Porn?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-09-30
Updated: 2013-09-30
Packaged: 2017-12-28 01:04:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,098
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/985798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gooseberry/pseuds/gooseberry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Her mother calls her a desert flower. She knows what her mother means--stubborn, prickly, clinging to the desert like scraggly brush.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>“And pretty, Mara,” her mother protests, and yes, maybe pretty--like a desert flower, with petals the color of a red fire or a blue sky or an orange sun--but still prickly beneath, with thorns and hooks. She knows what pretty things feel like, the way foxtail will worm its way into your flesh. She knows exactly how barbed seeds dig into your clothes.<br/></i>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>---</p>
<p>For a prompt on my tumblr: <b> culumacilinte said: Lesbian Dwarves in Harad/somewhere in the East/South of Middle Earth</b></p>
<p>Oh my god, this is just my excuse for writing lots of domestic fluff and slice-of-life fic, with lesbian dwarves and their inevitable passels of children.</p>
            </blockquote>





	foxtail

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Culumacilinte](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Culumacilinte/gifts).



> So this was turning into a monstrosity of a fic, and so I decided to just vignette it. Probably for years, and inevitably very slowly. Because apparently, all I want to do is write lots of domestic fluff about lesbian dwarves, and their inevitable passels of children, and how they argue but always kiss each other goodbye, and just. ugh. 
> 
> ANYWAYS, this first one is, uh, how they meet. The, um, “meet cute,” for lack of a better term. There will actually be, like, real relationship stuff in the next one—I just don’t know when that will be.
> 
> I’M SORRY (that I’m not really sorry at all).

Her mother calls her a desert flower. She knows what her mother means--stubborn, prickly, clinging to the desert like scraggly brush.

“And pretty, Mara,” her mother protests, and yes, maybe pretty--like a desert flower, with petals the color of a red fire or a blue sky or an orange sun--but still prickly beneath, with thorns and hooks. She knows what pretty things feel like, the way foxtail will worm its way into your flesh. She knows exactly how barbed seeds dig into your clothes.

“She’s more a firecracker,” her father says, and she knows what he means, too.

“I’d rather be sand,” she says, feeling cross. “Or a rock. An orange one.”

Her father laughs and her mother rolls her eyes, saying, “Maybe someday, when you’ve grown.”

They live in the desert. There is a great river that cuts through, running from the northeast to the southwest. The river is old--older, perhaps, than the dwarves themselves; it has burrowed into the ground, through sandstone and shale, and the cliffs left behind are orange and red and pink and purple, the colors of the sunset. It is where they live, in shallow dwellings carved into the face of the cliffs. It’s cool in the gorge, with the shadows cast by the cliffs and the chill that rises from the river, and she spends long days lying on the rocks that break the surface of the water, her skin pimpled from the chilly air.

To the west, there is the blue smudge of mountains, and to the north, the mountains are a blur of purple. The land breaks away to the south, dropping into wide valleys of red sandstone and green, winding rivers. When Mara stands at the top of the cliffs, though, she looks east--always east, because the east is white and flat and blinding to the eye. To the east are the salt flats, hundreds of miles of brilliant, barren land.

“Does it look like snow?” she asks her mother, because her mother is an Ironfist from the north. Her mother had been born in mountains, where there was rain and snow, and she had traveled east a hundred years ago.

“Like snow?” her mother repeats, squinting out at the salt flats. “A little--it burns your eye, the same way as snow. It’s too flat, though, and far too brittle. You can see the brittleness, even from here.”

She imagines it for years--what snow must look like, and feel like. “Does it taste sweet?” she asks her mother, and, “How cold does it feel?” 

She imagines piles of snow, like the down from the breasts of birds, and she imagines the sweetness of sugar, and the bone-cutting cold of deep water. It is a foreign imagining, shifting as she dreams of it, and as she squints toward the haze of the mountains far away.

“Do you miss it?” she asks her mother, and her mother rubs her chest, then says,

“I miss it, but I love the colors of the desert. Things are vibrant here, in a way they never were in the north.”

The salt flats is wealth beyond measure. There are workers on rotating shifts, carving blocks of salt to be carried on the river in either direction. It is backbreaking work, harvesting the salt, but the effort is little when compared to the returns. The boats are always returning, riding low in the river, overpacked with food and clothing and books and trinkets, everything Mara can imagine, and more. Her parents have clothes brought for her, all brightly colored and richly embroidered; there are belts made of bells and elaborately woven sashes, and perfumed oils for her hair and skin. There are necklaces and bracelets, combs and broaches, all brightly colored, all made in the colors of the desert, red and orange and blue and purple. More than all of that, though, are the books.

The cliffs hold knowledge beyond the reckoning. Thousands of books and scrolls are tucked into the cliffside, protected by the darkness of the carved sandstone and the dry heat of the desert. There are books of all sorts: books of poems and philosophy, sciences, music; there are books on how to make war, and how to make love, and how to make anything else of which Mara can dream. Mara spends much of her time tucked away in dark, dry rooms, reading travel journals and bestiaries. She reads hungrily, going over every word like she can taste it sliding down her throat. She looks at the pictures, some only small, rough sketches in the margins, others beautifully painted images that take up pages at a time. She looks at pictures of everything, mountains and kingdoms and birds and beasts; dwarves, and the other races, the men and elves that rarely venture into the desert. 

“You could leave,” her father says doubtfully. He looks more than a little troubled by the thought, and Mara tucks her book beneath her leg so she looks more attentive.

“We’ve plenty of money,” her father goes on. “You could travel, if you wished--perhaps north, to visit your mother’s kin.”

But she never leaves. She thinks about it, about taking a place on one of the boats that travel upriver. She would see snow, and mountains, and green plants; she would see animals whose fur changed in the seasons--she would see seasons, trees with leaves that changed color and hillsides that were a different color every day of the year.

Or she could travel south--follow the river as it rushed away, to the thundering falls and then the wide, glossy lakes that were broken up by plateaus. She could travel as far as the ocean, perhaps--see the sand that is said to be as white and blinding as the saltflats. Taste salty water, and hear the roar of waves.

“Perhaps,” she says, but she never leaves. She stays there, tucked into the cliffside, where she can see the clear, blue river and the white, brilliant salt and the desert sky in all its colors.

x

When Mara is a hundred and twenty nine, a half-dozen boats of dwarves come from the northeast. The majority of the dwarves will continue on to the southwest, but a few have come to work in the salt flats, to build or rebuild their wealth. It is that spring that she meets Kybele. Kybele is beautiful--dark skin and darker hair, and eyes that look like amber. She is shorter than Mara, and broader, and when she sees Mara, she grins broadly and says, “There are women in this desert, then?”

“A few,” Mara says, feeling a little startled. She hadn’t expected a woman to be amongst the influx of dwarves. Few women choose to work in the salt flats, or to even follow lovers to the saltflats, and Mara finds herself staring at the woman, curious. “You’ve come for the salt flats, then?”

“No,” the woman says, and her grin widens. “I’ve come for the books.”

“Ah.” Mara smiles back at her, feeling a little foolish. “Then you’re a scholar?”

The woman shrugs, says, “My father named me Kybele. He’d wanted me to conquer nations.”

“And have you?” Mara asks, still curious. Kybele laughs, shrugs again.

“None yet,” she says, “but I still haven’t decided which would the best.”

Kybele isn’t abrasive, but she’s loud and strong-willed and peculiarly foreign. Mara is related to nearly all the dwarves in the village, all kin on her father’s side. They are Blacklocks, and they all have the same curly hair and the same heavy eyebrows; she knows each dwarf in the village, and has since she was a child. She knows everyone’s face better than her own, their gaits and their laughs and the curl of their hair. Kybele, with her braids twisted on her head and her dull-colored clothes, stands out like a beacon.

“Do you like her?” Mara’s mother asks as she combs oil into Mara’s hair. Her mother’s fingers are light and ticklish, and Mara has to fight back a shiver each time her mother parts her hair again. 

“She’s interesting,” Mara offers, and then, feeling herself begin to blush, “And she’s beautiful.”

“She is,” her mother agrees, “though not as beautiful as my desert flower--”

Mara half-hearted tries to shrug away, but gives up when her mother tugs her hair warningly. When Mara’s holding still again, her mother says, “You should be kind to her. There aren’t many women here, and she must be feeling lonely.”

“I am kind,” Mara says sullenly. “I speak to her when I see her, and I’ve shown her where all the libraries are, even the dusty ones.”

“What a sacrifice,” her mother says back in a voice that makes Mara glower. Her mother knows that she’s making faces, just like always, and she smacks Mara’s shoulder, saying, “Don’t pout, I’m only teasing you. Now hold still, or you’ll get oil all over your clothes.”

She lets her mother finish oiling her hair, and by the time they’re wrapping her hair in long, thin scarves, Mara’s lost her bad temper. She helps her mother pin the scarves around her head, then says, “She is beautiful, though, isn’t she?”

“Yes,” her mother says again, “she is very beautiful.”

And Mara tries to befriend Kybele, but it feels so very awkward. Half of what Kybele talks about, Mara doesn’t understand. She’s never traveled farther than the southern plateaus, and she has never met an elf, and has only met a handful of men. She knows the trade languages, but she rarely speaks in anything other than Khuzdul, and while she has read so many books, she never seems to know what to say. 

Kybele, for her part, seems friendly, if a little distant, and she is always laughing--but Mara is never sure if she should laugh, too. The unsurety makes Mara feel anxious, and Mara makes a point to not seek Kybele out, to not lean out her window and scan the staircases, looking for Kybele’s dull clothes. Still, though, she runs into Kybele, on the pathways and the staircases and in the dark coolness of the libraries. Kybele smiles at her, distant but friendly, and Mara smiles back, always caught by the amber color of Kybele’s eyes.

“Don’t you work?” Kybele asks Mara once, when they have run into each other for the third time in as many days. There is a smudge on Kybele’s face, most likely dust, and Kybele’s hair has been tucked up into thick braids. Mara abruptly feels silly and childish, dressed in her pretty robes with her dangling bells, her hair loose and scented.

“No,” she says, and she can feel herself beginning to flush. “My father does, so there’s no need for my mother or for me--and there’s not much to be done in the house.” She tucks her hair behind her ear, then grabs it all, tugging it all back so it’s caught behind her shoulders. “Everyone takes turns with the gardens, and even if you work on the flats, the shifts are short.”

The excuse sounds lame to her, and sounds even lamer when she adds, “He doesn’t want me to work there. My father, I mean. On the flats.” 

“You live in your father’s house?” Kybele asks, and when Mara looks from Kybele’s eyes to her mouth, she can see that Kybele is smiling.

“Yes,” Mara says, and then, “There’s never been a reason to leave before.”

“You’ve never left?” Kybele asks, still smiling, but then she asks, in a louder voice, her smile fading, “You’ve never left the _village_?”

“I’ve never left my father’s house,” Mara corrects. “There’s never been anyone else I wished to live with. And of course I’ve left the village--only I haven’t left the desert.”

She watches the way Kybele looks around them, at the orange of the cliff walls and the dark sweep of shadows; at the narrow staircases that zigzag their way down to the river and up to the desert, and at the rope bridges that span the great width of the canyon. Mara looks, too, at this world of hers that is carved into sandstone and shale. It is a world of pulleys and sun-bleached ropes, of buckets of water hauled up every day to water the meager gardens across the canyon; it is a world where the sun is always hot and the moon is always cold, where the river rises and falls with the certainty of Mara’s own heartbeat.

“Do you ever wish to leave?” Kybele asks Mara as she looks at the canyon, and Mara looks with her, and says,

“I couldn’t--the desert is in my heart.”

There must be something that catches Kybele’s attention, though--perhaps, like Mara’s mother, Kybele is entranced by the colors of the desert. Either way, Kybele begins to follow Mara through the village, day after day. She teeters on the narrow staircases and clings to the rope bridges, and her skin burns beneath the desert sun. 

“It is beautiful,” she says once, when she is standing in the middle of the gardens. Her dress is covered in dust, as is her hair, and she looks like she could fade into the horizon. She’s shadowing her eyes and looking across the canyon, towards the saltflats.

Mara takes the time to straighten up from watering the garden; her hands are wet and caked in mud, and her shoulders are aching from hauling up the buckets of water. She tries to wipe the sweat from her brow with her arm, then she shades her eyes, too, squinting eastward.

x

When Mara is a hundred and thirty three, she lingers in the libraries, following Kybele from room to room. The floor beneath their feet is sandy, and when they walk, it is with a faint, rasping sound. Kybele’s dresses are light linen, silent when she moves, but Mara is used to the heat of the desert days, and so she wears heavier dresses, robes that fall to the ground and that drag across the sandy floors like the sound of a snake winding through desert brush.

She tries not to fidget, but when Kybele bends over her books, Mara can’t seem to focus on anything. She tries to read, and to look at the maps and pictures of her favorite books, but every time Kybele shifts, Mara’s attention is snatched away. Mara feels restless, trying to sit quietly by Kybele, and after an hour or two, she always leaves the libraries, climbing up the cliffside stairs until she’s at the top of the cliffs. She spreads her robes out on the ground, and lies there, where the sun can drench her skin.

“Your skin’s darker,” Kybele says once, when they are sharing dried berries. The berries are tart, and they wick the moisture from Mara’s mouth.

“Am I?” Mara asks, when she has tried to lick her lips. “I’ve been sleeping in the sun recently.” She can feel Kybele looking at her, so she pops the last of her berries into her mouth, then claps her hands together, making to leave.

“We should go swimming,” Kybele says before Mara has taken more than a step away. Kybele grabs Mara’s arm, too, just below Mara’s elbow, and is holding on loosely. “I’ve grown tired of the library. I feel like I never see the sun.”

Mara can’t say no--she can never seem to say no to Kybele--so she climbs down the cliffside with Kybele, until they reach the river. They undress side-by-side, and Mara fumbles with the buckle of her belt, the ties of her dresses. When she’s finally naked, she holds onto her clothes for a little bit longer, until Kybele asks, looking utterly impatient, “Well, Mara?”

The water is cold, and it shocks a yelp out of Mara. As soon as Kybele crashes into the water beside her, Mara grabs onto her, clinging and saying, “It’s cold--how _stupid_ , it’s so _cold_ \--”

They don’t swim for long--the water’s too cold, even for Kybele--before they’re forced to crawl back out of the river, onto a jutting rock. Kybele sits on the edge of the rock, dipping her feet into the slow river, and Mara sits close to her, drawing pictures on the rock with her wet fingertips.

The next day, Mara puts on her favorite dress, the one that is the color of the river, and she ties a belt of bells around her hips. She picks out a robe the color of the orange rocks, and she brushes water through her hair until her hair is curling. When she walks into the libraries, she can hear the echo of her bells, and she rolls her shoulders back, lifts her chin.

Kybele, when she sees her, looks surprised.

“Are you wearing bells?” Kybele asks, and when Mara tucks a side of her robe back, to show Kybele the belt of bells, Kybele smiles oddly. “They look beautiful,” Kybele says.

“Thank you,” Mara says, and then she has to sit down or risk running away, or maybe even fainting. Her heart is hammering in her chest, and her stomach feels like it is crawling its way up to her mouth. She thinks she might be ill, and she’s terrified to open her mouth.

“Why bells?” Kybele asks after a few moments, when Mara has managed to say nothing at all. Mara wipes her sweating hands on her beautiful orange robe, then she grips her knees and says,

“I love you.” She can hear the quiver in her voice, and she can feel the urge to cry welling up in her throat. She tries to swallow it back, but the quiver is still in her voice when she says, “I know it’s fast--too fast--but I’ve already decided. I’ve decided on you.”

“And that is why,” Kybele asks--or perhaps says, “you’re wearing bells.”

Mara nods, then says, “I wanted you to notice me.”

When Kybele laughs, Mara feels her face begin to flush. Before she can decide whether to flee, though, Kybele says, “How could I miss you? You look like the sky--all blue and orange.”

“The river,” Mara corrects, and she wipes her sweating hands on her robe again. “It’s the same blue as the river, not the sky--the sky is much brighter.”

“Is it?” Kybele asks, and when she holds out her hand, Mara reaches back, and grasps it. “Then you should find a dress that much brighter.”


End file.
